As part of Connecting Africa, CNN’s Victoria Rubadiri sits down with the director general of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, Didacus Jules, to discuss initiatives underway to help ease the movement of goods, people, and services between the two regions.
With similar cultural ties between the Caribbean and Africa, Jules believes it’s a natural progression to look for opportunities to trade. He explains, “Given the geopolitics of the world today, it is very clear to us that we need to deepen. We talk about the global south. It is absolutely essential that we do not rely on external entities to provide for us, that we need to do everything we can to assure our own sovereignty and independence.”
Jules tells Rubadiri about how to unlock these trade links, “You can’t have trade without a physical means of moving, unless you’re talking digital trade, which too is an area of opportunity that we are exploring. We also have some very innovative ideas on what we can do to boost Caribbean trade with Africa. We need to recognize the asymmetry of size and scale between us as small islands and even say any one African country. The idea is that we are going to look at opportunities for joint venture with Africa.”
He ends the interview by looking at what he thinks a thriving African community relationship will look like in ten years, “Certainly a large degree of free movement of people. For us in the OECS, as the Organization of Eastern Caribbean states driving the free movement of people, the free transfer of goods and services, what we would like to see happen is that these ports operate as a network with a division of labour in terms of the flow of products.”
These interviews were featured on the latest episode of Connecting Africa on CNN International.
https://edition.cnn.com/business/markets/connecting-africa
Connecting Africa airs on CNN International at the following times:
Saturday 9th May 2026 at 08:30 WAT
Sunday 10th May 2026 at 02:30 WAT and 18:30 WAT
Monday 11th May 2026 at 04:00 WAT
